a great morning for the park and atl bot gdn --- threatening rain, so everybody else stayed home --- setting up the "imaginary worlds" exhibit, which promises to be better than i was expecting --- it'll be fun to watch the topiary grow through the season

the first few miles through kitty hawk all the way to nags head and whalebone junction, where the national seashore begins, is miserably overbuilt --- jockey's ridge state park and nearby nags head woods are the small exceptions ---

bodie island lighthouse (1872) is open and gleaming after a gazillion-dollar restoration

the bonner bridge, which opened in 1963, is being rebuilt --- its over oregon inlet, which opened in 1846 and has been widening ever since --- not far south, new inlet re-opened after hurricane irene in 2009 and they've only managed a makeshift bridge to keep the towns on hatteras island from being completely cut off

the final leg of the journey was the ferry ridge across hatteras inlet to ocracoke island --- north carolina runs a bunch of ferries across the sounds and between the islands so you can get to almost anywhere except portsmouth island at the north end of cape lookout national seashore

portsmouth is barely visible on the horizon across hatteras inlet

the pony island motel opened in 1959 -- we stayed there in 1963 or so --- they still have one of the better restaurants on the island ---

19 April 2013

i drove to newnan this afternoon to meet some friends for dinner --- stopped at holly hill to see if they had gotten the dates done, which they had --- left ma some flowers --- don't have to go back again

18 April 2013

this one is in my dentist's new offices --- biggest one i've seen outside the botanical garden ----

my little red one is not looking quite as robust --- i always stick them out on the balcony in march, since they can stand some cold weather but i might have jumped the gun this year --- i thought this one was dead, but it retained a single leaf and now all of the stems are budding!

this guy, on the other hand, dropped all of its leaves but never really quit blooming! it's one plant that literally never stops blooming ----

broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime― mark twain

truly, what of good

ever have prophets brought to men?

craft of many words,

only through

evil your message speaks.

seers bring aye

terror, so to keep

men afraid.

―

aeschylus

he cannot be a gentleman which loveth not a dog.

john northbrooke, c. 1570

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

john stuart mill in a letter to conservative mp sir john pakington (march 1866)